IF HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE_WHO ARE WE?

Don't forget to vote for Victor Standish :

http://www.wattpad.com/1073509-the-legend-of-victor-standish#comments

"Hell is other people."

Jean-Paul Sarte wrote that a long ago. A good friend quoted it last night in an email.

Recently, she received a rejection from what she called an Uber-Agent.

The agent wrote that if my friend was too stupid to know how to change the formatting of her email then she was too stupid for the agent's time.

Ouch.

When I first started out, I got a similar reply, and I learned how to do it.

I wrote my friend how to change her format. It's a guy-thing.

We hear a friend tell of a problem, we tell how to fix it.

Counselor Rule #1 : Listen beneath the words.

My friend is smart. She learned how to format all on her own, thank you very much. No. That wasn't the problem.

This same Uber-Agent was one of the players of last year's "Maybe we should bill our clients into poverty by the hour" debate.

Most agents are just like us :

overworked, underpaid, wondering how to pay the mounting bills in this harsh economy.

You really can't blame them for looking for new ways out of growing debt.

Counselor Rule #2 : Cruelty is never personal.

Now, when your nose has just been broken by a bully, it's hard to convince your pain of that. But it's true.

Cruelty is all about some lack, some insecurity in the instigator of it.

The Uber-Agent did my friend a favor.

The cutting rejection was just the tip of the iceberg.

It implied that the agent took the ability to hurt without consequence as license to do so.

I certainly wouldn't want a business partnership with a sadist. I want a professional.

As for wanting the allure of charging by the hour and the opportunity for abuse it would give ...

greed is never personal either.

But there is a reason we lock the doors when we leave home.

Not everyone is a crook. But they are out there.

Moral : Never wear a raw meat necklace in the jungle.

Counselor Rule #3 : Would you just shut up and do Rule #1.

My friend wrote me because she was beginning to believe that the world of agenting was harsh, greedy, and pain-inflicting.

Counselor Rule #4 : Sometimes the other person is right.

I agreed with my friend that sometimes business is a cold world of numbers. She was indeed right. I went further.

It just wasn't the world of agenting : the whole world was often that way.

Counselor Rule #5 : It is what is. What are you going to do now?

Resigning from the world is not an option.

Within you there is a path out of whatever jungle you find yourself.


Sign Post #1 : See the jungle through the other person's eyes :

Mostly the world runs on self-interest.

The agent is not Mother Theresa. She wants to make a good living for her efforts. Just like we do.

You are merely one of the means to do so.

If you're not helping her put money into her pockets,

then the time she is using on you is taking money out of those same pockets.

Solution : Make yourself worth her time.

Learn your craft. Strive to grow daily. Accept assholes as the price of living.

Try not to become an asshole yourself.

Help the people you meet along the way. Become the change you want to see in the world.


Sign Post #2 : Remember Rule #2

It hardly ever is personal when someone hurts you.

It comes from the hurt within them. Look for that hurt. Try not to step on that sore toe ever again.

As long as it is honorable, dance whatever dance that takes.


Sign Post #3 : If you're heading in the wrong direction, darting forward is certainly not going to get you to your desired destination any faster.

Sometimes harsh people are right in the wrong way. Look at your work. Could it be improved?

Of course it could.

Could you learn more about the busisness end of writing?

Of course you could.

Reading agents' blogs is like listening to Presidential Press Agents :

you are only hearing what they want you to hear.

Those blogs will give you a guide on how not to irritate the agents.

But the true skinny lies behind those curtains.


Sign Post #4 : Go behind those curtains.

The blogs that will help you do that :

WRITER BEWARE : http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/

WRITER BEWARE BLOGS : http://accrispin.blogspot.com/

VICTORIA STRAUSS : http://www.victoriastrauss.com/

ABSOLUTE WRITE WATER COOLER : http://absolutewrite.com/forums/

PREDITORS AND EDITORS : http://pred-ed.com/pubagent.htm

Two Books that will help you do that :


THE SONS OF MAXWELL PERKINS : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570035482/ref=kinw_rke_rti_1


{In April 1938 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins, "What a time you’ve had with your sons, Max—Ernest gone to Spain, me gone to Hollywood, Tom Wolfe reverting to an artistic hill-billy."

As the sole literary editor with name recognition among students of American literature, Perkins remains permanently linked to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe in literary history and literary myth.

Their relationships, lived largely by letters, play out in the 221 letters Matthew J. Bruccoli has assembled in this volume.

This collection documents the extent of the fatherly forbearance, attention, and encouragement the legendary Scribners editor gave to his authorial sons. The correspondence portrays his ability to juggle the requirements of his three geniuses.


SAVE THE CAT : http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277664679&sr=1-1

Blake Snyder was a working, selling writer himself, so that gives the reader a true inside glimpse into what it's like, what it takes, and what to expect on the long road to screenwriting success.

Many screenwriting how-to books are written by people who have few or no real studio credits, so with this book you are getting the info direct from the source of a successful member of the Hollywood elite.

Synder starts out with a bang, describing how important a good title, pitch and concept are, and giving tons of useful advise for whipping those log lines into shape, {the best shape ever in fact, for as the author points out, many industry powerbrokers won't even look beyond a log line...so it better be good. Very good}

He also gives an insider's look at the world of screenwriter's agents {which is not so different from the world of literary agents.}

************

I thought that if my friend felt as she did, then others out there in the blogverse probably did, too. I hope that today's post helped in some small way

***********
There are some hilarious Bruce Campbell soup labels you can print out and paste on your own soup cans to amuse friends who drop over at this site http://scifiwire.com/2010/06/four-labels-from-the-bruc.php

Because I like Bruce Campbell almost as much as I do CALVIN & HOBBES, here is the man himself doing a summation of my post :

OBSCENITY_OR F--- YOU SAY!

Obscenities.

What are we to do with them as writers?

Pretend they don't exist?

Scatter them willy-nilly throughout our novel?

F--- has become the duct tape of modern speech. Without it some rap singers would be neutered.

Look at some of the books out there. I have.

Where is the heart, the soul, the marrow in the bones?

Oddly enough, those things are often found in the profanity of said novel,

in how that profanity is used, and in who uses it when.

Profanity is much like spice in a meal. Too much blunts the taste of the meal ... or the novel.

Yet, take out the "real" in a novel, and you neuter Chekhov into the artificiality of Mansfield.

Better to drink water than near-beer.

Profanity lends a realism to novels.

Not that without it, novels cannot have the sense of the real.

In Dostoevsky, there is such a burning truth in the prose that it changes you even as you read it.

THE HITCH HIKER'S GUIDE TO PROFANITY :

A.) KNOW WHERE TO LOB THE GRENADE :

Never in the structure of the novel. Only in dialogue. And then only when unavoidable.

Even in first person? Yes. It's strange I know. But it is a rule like gravity.

Of course there are exceptions. According to the strict rules of aerodynamics, a bumble bee ought not to be able to fly.

It doesn't know any better, and so it zips along quite merrily on its buzzing, pollinating way.

Trust your instinct on first person narration and profanity.

B.) MOST SLANG HAS A SHORT SHELF LIFE :

It takes three years at the fastest for your book to be published. Don't use slang that may well go stale in that time.

Don't be worried about being timely :

use nice Anglo-Saxon words that have stood the test of a thousand years. You won't be sorry that you played it safe with swearing.

C.) YOU'RE NOT GEORGE CARLIN :

He wrote for shock ... and for reflection on why we are who we are and why we say what we do.

Don't be the little boy writing gross words on the wall to be smart.

One, you're not very smart if that is why you are doing it.

Two, even if you succeed, you have jarred your reader out of the flow of your story.

D.) THE PILOT ONLY EJECTS WHEN HE IS ABOUT TO CRASH :

Remember : the jet pilot only ejects from the cockpit when he is about to crash.

So don't crash your novel unless you're ending it.

Using profanity for shock value blunts very quickly.

Never use a swear word without first seeing if you can't replace it with another word.

Never make the waters choppy if you don't have to.

Then, there is the strange fact that some very common words bring us up short when we see them on the printed page.

Take "fart" for example. It just comes out oddly.

How often have you seen it in a novel you've recently read? Not often I bet.

Then, again ...

E.) QUEEN VICTORIA IS DEAD, AND I DON'T FEEL SO WELL MYSELF :

Put fornicate, copulate, co-habit, or consummate in the mouth of anyone in your novel but a priest or nun,

and you will make your entire novel as plastic and false as a Barbie sitting next to a Ken.

F.) DON'T PUT A BLU-RAY INTO YOUR DVD PLAYER :

Each person in your novel should have his or her own style or voice.

Not everyone curses.

And not everyone curses in the same way or at the same ratio.

(Check out Lenny's World {November 8th} for an excellent post on voice in the world of writing http://lennys-world.blogspot.com/ )

My character, Sam McCord, uses profanity very little.

I explain it in the course of my novel. Elu, his blood brother, uses none and there is a valid reason for that given in the course of events.

The street people of the French Quarter are another matter.

Victor Standish, the 13 year street gypsy, has a colorful vocabulary which he tries to prune for the sake of his mentor, Samuel McCord.

F.) FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS AND THE CASH REGISTER RINGS :

Fact of life #1 : Publishing is a business. A shaky business at the moment. No publisher wants to chase away customers.

Fact of life #2 : Profanity upsets some people. So how to write about rough people without using their profanity? Hemingway did this in FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS :

“The man, Agustin, spoke so obscenely, coupling an obscenity to every noun as an adjective, using the same obscenity as a verb,

that Robert Jordan wondered if he could speak a straight sentence” ( Chapter 3).

This tells the reader that, yes, these people are rough and foul-mouthed; so, just take that as a given

and move on with the story. Since that novel has never gone out of print, most readers must be comfortable with that.

G.) MARK TWAIN WAS RIGHT :

"Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

"The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way."

"There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that."

In other words, when there is no other word which means exactly the same thing and gives the same effect, use the profanity.

H.) A LAST WORD FROM HEMINGWAY :

In a letter to his publisher and mentor, Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway ended the letter about profanity with ... "F-ck the whole business. That's legal, isn't it?"
***

HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE

Hell is other people.


Jean-Paul Sarte wrote it long ago. A good friend quoted it last night in an email.


Recently, she received a rejection from what is called an Uber-Agent. The agent wrote that if my friend was too stupid to know how to change the formatting of her email then she was too stupid for the agent's time.


When I first started out, I got a similar reply, and I learned how to do it. I wrote my friend how to change her format. It's a guy-thing. We hear a friend tell of a problem, we tell how to fix it.



Counselor Rule #1 : Listen beneath the words.


My friend is smart. She learned how to format all on her own, thank you very much. No. That wasn't the problem.


This same Uber-Agent was one of the players in the recent : "Maybe we should bill our clients into poverty by the hour" debate.



Counselor Rule #2 : Cruelty is never personal.


Now, when your nose has just been broken by a bully, it's hard to convince your pain of that. But it's true.


Cruelty is all about some lack, some insecurity in the instigator of it. The Uber-Agent did my friend a favor. The cutting rejection was just the tip of the iceberg.


It implied that the agent took the ability to hurt without consequence as license to do so. I certainly wouldn't want a business partnership with a sadist. I want a professional.


As for wanting the allure of charging by the hour and the opportunity for abuse it would give ... greed is never personal either. But there is a reason we lock the doors when we leave home. Not everyone is a crook. But they are out there.



Counselor Rule #3 : Would you just shut up and do Rule #1 :


My friend wrote me because she was beginning to believe that the world of agenting was harsh, greedy, and pain-inflicting.



Counselor Rule #4 : Sometimes the other person is right.


I agreed with my friend. She was right. I went further. It just wasn't the world of agenting : the whole world was that way.



Counselor Rule #5 : It is what is. What are you going to do now?


Resigning from the world is not an option. Within you there is a path out of whatever jungle you find yourself.



Sign Post #1 : See the jungle through the other person's eyes :


Mostly the world runs on self-interest. The agent is not Mother Theresa. She wants to make a good living for her efforts.


You are merely one of the means to do so. If you're not helping her put money into her pockets, then the time she is using on you is taking money out of those same pockets.



Solution : Make yourself worth her time.

Learn your craft. Strive to grow daily. Accept assholes as the price of living. Try not to become an asshole yourself. Help the people you meet along the way.



Become the change you want to see in the world.



Sign Post #2 : Remember Rule #2


It hardly ever is personal when someone hurts you. It comes from the hurt within them. Look for that hurt. Try not to step on that sore toe ever again. As long as it is honorable, dance whatever dance that takes.



Sign Post #3 : If you're heading in the wrong direction, going forward is certainly not going to get you to your desired destination.


Sometimes harsh people are right in the wrong way. Look at your work. Could it be improved? Of course it could.


Could you learn more about the busisness end of writing? Of course you could.


Reading agents' blogs is like listening to Presidential Press Agents : you are only hearing what they want you to hear. Those blogs will give you a guide on how not to irritate the agents. But the true skinny lies behind those curtains.



Sign Post #4 : Go behind those curtains.


The blogs that will help you do that :


WRITER BEWARE : http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/



WRITER BEWARE BLOGS : http://accrispin.blogspot.com/



VICTORIA STRAUSS : http://www.victoriastrauss.com/



ABSOLUTE WRITE WATER COOLER : http://absolutewrite.com/forums/



PREDITORS AND EDITORS : http://pred-ed.com/pubagent.htm



Two Books that will help you do that :


THE SONS OF MAXWELL PERKINS : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570035482/ref=kinw_rke_rti_1


{In April 1938 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins, "What a time you’ve had with your sons, Max—Ernest gone to Spain, me gone to Hollywood, Tom Wolfe reverting to an artistic hill-billy."


As the sole literary editor with name recognition among students of American literature, Perkins remains permanently linked to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe in literary history and literary myth.


Their relationships, lived largely by letters, play out in the 221 letters Matthew J. Bruccoli has assembled in this volume.


This collection documents the extent of the fatherly forbearance, attention, and encouragement the legendary Scribners editor gave to his authorial sons. The correspondence portrays his ability to juggle the requirements of his three geniuses.



SAVE THE CAT : http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277664679&sr=1-1


Blake Snyder was a working, selling writer himself, so that gives the reader a true inside glimpse into what it's like, what it takes, and what to expect on the long road to screenwriting success.


Many screenwriting how-to books are written by people who have few or no real studio credits, so with this book you are getting the info direct from the source of a successful member of the Hollywood elite.


Synder starts out with a bang, describing how important a good title, pitch and concept are, and giving tons of useful advise for whipping those log lines into shape, {the best shape ever in fact, for as the author points out, many industry powerbrokers won't even look beyond a log line...so it better be good. Very good}


He also gives an insider's look at the world of screenwriter's agents {which is not so different from the world of literary agents.}

************

I thought that if my friend felt as she did, then others out there in the blogverse probably did, too. I hope that today's post helped in some small way

***********
There are some hilarious Bruce Campbell soup labels you can print out and paste on your own soup cans to amuse friends who drop over at this site http://scifiwire.com/2010/06/four-labels-from-the-bruc.php

In honor of today being Bruce Campbell's birthday, here is the man himself doing a summation of my post :